Splunk AppDynamics Reviews

It is used as an APM. We utilize Splunk as a SIEM for security and infrastructure observability.

What I like the most about Splunk AppDynamics is the end-to-end observability for the application, along with traces. It enhances productivity and aids in cost avoidance.

Splunk AppDynamics is no longer available as a standalone product in the market. Cisco has integrated it into their full-stack observability solution called the Splunk Observability Cloud. Therefore, purchasing Splunk AppDynamics as a standalone product is no longer an option, which presents a challenge for us. After Cisco acquired Splunk in 2023, Splunk AppDynamics, initially a separate product, became part of Cisco's full-stack solution. This change means that I can no longer deploy it as before.

Splunk AppDynamics does not support the complete MELT framework, which includes metrics, events, logging, and tracing for the entire stack. It lacks maturity in correlation within the observability spectrum. Splunk AppDynamics provides an end-to-end view of the application but misses the infrastructure part, which is crucial.

I have used this solution for nearly six years, dating back to 2019.

It is quite stable. We have faced challenges with Splunk agents and Splunk AppDynamics agents. You often have multiple agents running simultaneously in the infrastructure. This can sometimes cause conflicts with your application, so it is necessary to conduct appropriate testing before deploying them in production to prevent potential outages.

We are facing issues at the moment with Splunk and scalability. We have reached maximum capacity in our tier, and extending capacity has not been cost-effective from Splunk's perspective.

I would rate their support an eight out of ten.

I find the initial setup to be of medium to high complexity. It requires appropriate initial planning for the tools to be successfully implemented.

After implementation, it takes a little bit of time to realize its value.

We leveraged professional services from both Splunk and Cisco for the deployment of Splunk AppDynamics.

The pricing is quite comparable to similar solutions in the market. All these solutions at the moment are cheap, but it is like paying for insurance; you pay insurance to avoid major damage.

I would rate Splunk AppDynamics a seven out of ten. When addressing observability concerns, one should not only focus on the application layer. A full observability approach is required. New tools focus on the entire stack end-to-end, offering correlation to facilitate root cause analysis and minimize MTTR. Therefore, I would rate it a seven out of ten.

We had several applications that were facing performance issues. To improve our observability, alerting, and monitoring of these performance problems, we onboarded the applications onto Splunk AppDynamics. This allowed us to gain better insights into the issues and identify the business transactions that were causing the problems.

I haven't used the APM feature. It's primarily been configuring database collectors on a database.

Splunk AppDynamics has been effective in auto-discovery and mapping and visualizing our application ecosystem. There have been instances where we've needed to fine-tune the auto discovery feature. When we installed it on Unix and Windows applications, it retrieved a substantial amount of information. We then had to configure the information to meet our specific needs. The tool goes out and summarizes all the business transactions, but we need to limit or filter out the excess data. This is particularly important for gaining visibility into application performance and proactively resolving issues.

Using Splunk AppDynamics for business transaction monitoring significantly impacts my ability to prioritize transactions such as logins or checkouts, and it has improved the process.

I've worked on an application where users book trades into a system. Each booking translates into a transaction. Similarly, users query these trades, which corresponds to other transactions. I can see the speed of these transactions and identify issues when trying to write them into the database. I can also monitor when transactions are being queried. Additionally, there are other applications accessing the database, and I can observe their interactions as well. Overall, it enhances my ability to visualize what’s happening behind the scenes.

I find Splunk AppDynamics' AI-powered anomaly detection and root cause analysis to be very effective in diagnosing performance issues. I can quickly identify if there's any blocking on the database. Using the APM tool or the graphical user interface, I can track slow SQL queries. I can sort all those transactions to see which ones are consuming a lot of CPU and identify the long-running queries. This allows me to quickly assess the situation and understand what is going on.

Based on the issues we observe in Splunk AppDynamics, we know where to focus or where to spend money in improving the application. It gives us that flexibility to be able to improve and know where to focus our spending power.

I like the fact that you can self discover business transactions. It's easy to onboard your applications and configure your collectors or your agents.

The ability to monitor transactions and identify slow SQL queries in a database is valuable. We can detect issues such as blocking. It allows me to visually analyze the database's performance and understand its current state. Additionally, users can configure a dashboard to provide an overview of the database activities. 

When I onboard applications onto AppDynamics, I configure database agents or collectors to gather metrics and monitor business transactions. This setup enables me to see what is occurring within the database environment. I have extensive experience in configuring agents and collectors for databases, as well as for Windows and Unix machines.

I would probably suggest making the tool more real-time and allowing for integration with a wider range of DevOps tools. This is particularly relevant when comparing it to something like Genius, which I recognize is a different tool altogether. Ideally, I would prefer a situation where I don't have to use two or three different observability tools, allowing me to focus on just one.

When you self-discover observable business transactions, there should be a better way to focus on the specific transactions that matter to us. In our environment, we have numerous business transactions, but not all of them are relevant for monitoring. It would be helpful to easily identify and target the business transactions we want to concentrate on without it being too cumbersome.

I've been using Splunk AppDynamics for about three to four years.

It has gotten a lot more stable over the years in comparison to when I first started using it. I would rate it a seven out of ten for stability.

It's easily scalable. I would rate it a seven out of ten for stability.

There are approximately 100 global users in my organization who work with Splunk AppDynamics.

The technical support for Splunk AppDynamics deserves a solid eight out of ten.

It's down to the complexity of our environment. We've got a lot of legacy applications, so it is a little bit complex trying to implement it. We had about 200 machines or databases. It took some time to get it implemented. It took a couple of months.

From an end user's perspective, I often need to coordinate with my infrastructure team. Ideally, I would like to implement it without having to rely on them. For example, if I don’t have full access to a database, I have to reach out to my infrastructure team to gain full access or to create a collector on the database. It would be much more efficient if I could log into the database and create a collector myself. In my experience, having to wait for administrators with full access to take action slows down the implementation process.

The only maintenance I could think of is having to make sure that the accounts are onboarded and the password is reset because the password sometimes expires. That's the only issue. It's quite straightforward. Once you reset those passwords, you're good.

I estimate it saves 10% to 15% in various resources.

Genius is likely more intuitive and offers greater functionality. It can be easily integrated with many other DevOps tools. In comparison to AppDynamics, Genius provides much more flexibility. However, one downside of Genius is that it does not automatically discover business transactions. From that perspective, AppDynamics has an advantage due to its self-discovery feature for transactions.

I would rate Splunk AppDynamics a seven out of ten.

I use Splunk AppDynamics as our monitoring tool, and it has been effectively used in the last five years to identify major issues and rectify them without causing a major impact to the website.

Splunk AppDynamics tells us what the top 10 queries are which are actually contributing to the load on the database, and it gives us the view of what exactly the query does, whether it uses more DB CPU or is contributing to the roll-up contention on the database. These details provide great insights, making it one of the good features from Splunk AppDynamics.

When it comes to the front end with my Node.js and React.js applications, it doesn't capture much of the details. The improvements I made were mainly around the Java agent side in our app layer, but it was lacking detailed information on the front-end layer. This is a disadvantage, and it could be improved from Splunk AppDynamics' perspective.

I have been working with this solution for the last five years.

It has a cost associated with it, but it is scalable only from a scalability perspective. It is scalable.

I have two different types of technologies used in my project. One of the projects was using a different monitoring tool called Dynatrace, a major competitor for Splunk AppDynamics. Discussions were going on whether I wanted to replace Splunk AppDynamics with Dynatrace, and a decision was made to replace Dynatrace with Splunk AppDynamics because of the capability it has with custom metrics and Java agents. However, discussions are now ongoing about potentially replacing Splunk AppDynamics with Dynatrace. I am using these two major tools in my ecosystem: Splunk AppDynamics and Dynatrace.

I monitor all the business transactions such as basket and add to basket via Splunk AppDynamics. I have set up and diagnosed those transactions.

For the others, they get captured as part of the catch-all transaction itself. In case I need them to be investigated, I use filters to identify the transaction specific to the particular BT.

I have not used auto-discovery as a tool such as analytics and the tracing, trace component, and diagnostic traces much. However, I use historical data to understand where exactly the issue is and try to rectify it.

I have not used the anomaly detection and root cause features.

I have not used troubleshooting as a feature.

Regarding Digital Experience Monitoring, I will lose the limit, causing licensing issues. I identified what pages and applications I don't want to monitor and removed them to cope with licensing. Going beyond the license means paying additionally.

I was not using the Secure Application feature.

Currently, I am not using an on-premises environment, so I cannot comment more on the on-premises side of things as I am using a cloud-based application in all areas.

My overall rating for Splunk AppDynamics is 9 out of 10.

My main use cases for Splunk AppDynamics include APM, application performance monitoring.

The features of Splunk AppDynamics that I appreciate most are the business processes. These features benefit my organization by providing a bigger picture, not only of their own systems, however, how it influences other parts of the environment and how we are being influenced by other parts. For its time, Splunk AppDynamics helped improve my organization's business resilience quite a bit.

To improve Splunk AppDynamics, it should migrate seamlessly into observability Splunk, which is called Splunk Observability Cloud.

I have been using Splunk AppDynamics for around 15 years.

The stability and reliability of Splunk AppDynamics were okay. I did not experience unusual downtime, crashes, or performance issues; no software is perfect, but it was within the expected parameters.

Splunk AppDynamics had some confusion about the SaaS, no SaaS, only SaaS strategy, which wasn't clear. Some time ago, they committed again to on-premises, however, it was too late.

I evaluate customer service and technical support as good, seven out of ten.

Positive

Prior to adopting Splunk AppDynamics, I was not using another solution to address similar needs; this was our first step into the APM world.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that it was very expensive.

Sadly, I did not see return on investment with Splunk AppDynamics.

The solution I was using prior was Grafana Cloud.

What caused me to stop using the solution is that we failed to bring the product to our DevOps teams so that they could easily use it and learn how to use it, this is something we had to learn again. I would advise other organizations considering Splunk AppDynamics to take a sharp look at the whole Splunk product portfolio and how they merge to observability cloud, integrating many AppDynamics features; this is very interesting, but I don't know whether or not they are already there.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Splunk AppDynamics seven out of ten.

Normally, we require end-user monitoring for our digital banking services. Since we operate in the financial sector, we need monitoring for our mobile apps and web browsers, particularly for our online banking systems. This is our main use case.

The feature that I appreciate in AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is the intuitive and user-friendly dynamic mapping it creates for workflows. The application flow presents a streamlined interface, making it easy to navigate across different interfaces and troubleshoot applications. This interface is particularly valuable for identifying and resolving application issues effectively.

One aspect that requires improvement is the agent. Without an agent, gathering sufficient information on applications is challenging. Additionally, the agent sometimes creates performance issues in production environments. If AppDynamics could develop a means to monitor without an agent, it could significantly improve application performance and reduce potential problems. Moving to an agentless solution, like what some competitors are doing, would be beneficial.

We have been providing the solutions using AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring for three years.

The solution is stable overall. I can rate it nine out of ten. Occasionally, the agents stop working, which disrupts monitoring, but such instances are rare.

AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is scalable. However, I did not find any Docker solution available with it, and a separate instance has to be installed. 

Overall, scalability is fine, and I rate it eight out of ten.

The customer service and support are helpful and responsive. I can rate their support nine out of ten.

Positive

Normally, two to three engineers are involved in the installation process from our side.

AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring uses a token-based pricing model, which is complex and can be confusing for customers. Previously, there were different pricing models for web browsers and mobile apps, but now they have unified it. Customers have to pay a premium price, however, they receive considerable value from the product.

We are aware of competitors in the market like Dynatrace and Riverbed. We do not work with them.

Overall, there is room for improvement in AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring, so I rate it eight out of ten. 

The complex token-based pricing model can confuse customers when calculating costs.

AppDynamics is used to monitor multiple applications in our company. Our company recently faced an issue with a mobile banking application. The tool conveyed that many people logged in successfully in the aforementioned application, and for others, the login failed. 

AppDynamics showed us at our company that the customers on a specific telecom carrier have a problem with the SSL certificate between the mobile device and our company's firewall.

In our company, we also had an issue with slow functionality in a mobile application that also belonged to the mobile banking category; AppDynamics showed us that it was an issue with the database, as found in database monitoring. Another use case of the solution is for basic server monitoring such as CBU, disk memory, Network I/O, and similar operations.

The transaction snapshots are the most valuable feature of AppDynamics. I find this feature valuable because for every transaction running through any application server that is detected by AppDynamics, you can check the code that makes the flow list and an issue, which can come from any functionality, and in our company, we can utilize the saved time for troubleshooting and reduce the time to repair and the developers can enhance the security and functionality. 

The solution is available at an inflated cost. 

I have been using AppDynamics for three years. 

I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. In our company, AppDynamics has been deployed in the main data center and we have two controllers related to a single application, we haven't faced any issues related to the application's stability. The stability of the solution depends on the number of applications being monitored efficiently using AppDynamics. 

Our company has integrated AppDynamics to around 8000 end users. In our organization, we are using AppDynamics to monitor applications, infrastructure, and a few network devices. Numerous cloud-based applications in our bank are monitored using AppDynamics. 

AppDynamics offers excellent customer support from professionals, process, and technology perspectives. I would rate the tech support a nine out of ten. 

Positive

Before AppDynamics, our organization used New Relic APM, CA APM, and Broadcom APM. In our company, we switched to AppDynamics because it supports numerous applications developed in Java, PHP, Dot.Net, and other programming languages.

CA APM offers support for a limited number of languages. AppDynamics is used for end-user monitoring, while CA APM is used for front-end or back-end applications. Our company switched to AppDynamics for end-to-end monitoring, starting from the customer to the data center. 

Our company is an institutional bank with numerous customers who need to avail themselves of and be satisfied with our digital services. AppDynamics helps us reduce the response time and investigate issues related to the end user. Our organization has received an ROI with the solution. 

I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten. The solution is highly expensive. Our company pays for the solution on a yearly basis, if we don't add new modules or features to the license, we need to pay $1000000 every year. AppDynamics is subscription-based and can cost between $800 to $1000000. 

Before choosing AppDynamics, we evaluated New Relic and Dynatrace. The troubleshooting feature is more enhanced in New Relic and Dynatrace than in AppDynamics. In our company, we have an instant or global agent in our application.

The NOC team and application support team in our company use AppDynamics to extract the root cause analysis for an incident, when evaluating multiple tools it was found that AppDynamics has more features in this area. 

We have an NOC team in our company that is responsible for monitoring the response time of bank applications. The core responsibility of the NOC team is to monitor the response of each channel, which is supported by a customer-facing application for the bank.

The aforementioned channels include end-users, data centers, and each vital component. I would rate AppDynamics as eight out of ten overall. AppDynamics lacks a DR architecture; customers will receive benefits from the product, but the value versus cost is extremely high. 

AppDynamics keeps up with the market trends in application performance management. One of the market trends is analytics performance, and AppDynamics addresses it with the feature of a smart agent, where you can deploy one agent and procure insights on the application's infrastructure, performance, and analytics. The vendor is constantly working on the development and improvement of AppDynamics. 

The performance and DevOps teams use the solution to drill down and find out the root cause if we are getting any high response time. In that condition, we have drilled down and checked out the calls and methods, which are taking too long.

The solution's most valuable feature is the response time from the end-to-end server. The solution is user-friendly and easy to use for everyone.

The solution’s pricing is high and could be reduced. The solution’s setup is a bit complex.

I have been using AppDynamics Server Monitoring for five years.

The solution provides good stability.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

The solution's scalability depends on how many user licenses you are taking. The solution is charged per user, team, or domain.

We have to pay a yearly licensing fee for the solution. We can raise concerns or send mail regarding issues or difficulties we face, and the support team will contact us. They provide support to configure things or to learn more about their product.

The solution’s initial setup is a bit complex. It took around seven to eight days to set up everything, including the agent and server name.

AppDynamics Server Monitoring is an expensive solution.

We are not using the alerts as we have different mechanisms called resilience testing or kiosk testing. The DevOps team uses the alerts. During production, they will get alerts when they see the CPU utilization going beyond the 60% or 70% benchmark they have set.

AppDynamics and Dynatrace are the only two tools that provide accurate or stable end-to-end response time. These two tools can show you everything that's going on from the back end. If we are doing performance testing or any testing, these two tools can provide us with every detail about what's happening in the back end from the server side that we can't see.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The most valuable feature of AppDynamics is that you can easily determine the load on the application. You can find out how many users are using it, whether there are any response time issues, whether any errors are going high for your application's transactions, etc.

The solution's user interface should be improved. Since it's a GUI tool, traversing from the error to the root cause can sometimes be difficult if you are not thorough with AppDynamics. This could slow down the tool, thereby causing you trouble.

I have been using AppDynamics since 2016.

Most financial services sectors, such as banking and insurance sectors, use AppDynamics. The solution's user base is very high.

The solution's initial setup is moderately easy. Installing the tool on old applications like Unix and Linux should be much easier. However, there could be some issues installing the solution on the cloud. The regular pre-defined agents might not work, and you will have to customize and then use them.

AppDynamics was initially a startup. Later, it was sold to Cisco, which has been quite aggressive in its pricing. I would say the solution is affordable because it is widely used across financial service sectors.

Currently, the solution is on the cloud as well. You can have your cloud applications onboarded to AppDynamics without any issues. AppDynamics has its own SaaS environment and SaaS controller on which you can onboard your application. You will need to install some of the AppDynamics agents.

I used to contact the tools team, and they used to answer our queries mostly. If not, they used to take it to the support and then come back with their solution. Users need to list all the servers related to their application on which they want the AppDynamics agents installed. Depending on whether your application is cloud-based or non-cloud, you need to list all your servers. Then, a further installation process would be recommended.

To use AppDynamics, you need to understand the different flows. If an issue is currently ongoing, you need to check which GUI flow is being used. If you want previous data, it will be in the history, and that's a different flow. Working with the tool is tricky, but two to three weeks of continuous work on it should bring you up to date.

Suppose you are working in a bank. For your application, you can configure everything regarding the business transaction. For balance transfers, you can have one business transaction that will monitor balance transfers. There can be another business transaction that can monitor credit cards. You can configure different flows and transactions within the flows in terms of business transactions. Wherever there is an issue, that exact business transaction will start developing.

The integration of AppDynamics within our CI/CD pipeline has positively affected our deployment frequency and application quality. Whenever there is a deployment or release, we see some hiccups in AppDynamics. There will be some things going on on that server, which we can easily identify in AppDynamics. Only after we validate that do we give the next go.

Overall, I rate the solution eight and a half out of ten.